Watching
by El Hustino
Summary: I stood there, in the doorway, watching him. Watching him watch others. Just what the Hell was he doing, anyways? [Short oneshot reposted]


The twin suns were high in the sky, showering the already heat-stricken, dry world with far more warmth than was necessary or enjoyable. The land, the sky, the people—everything was parched; an unquenchable thirst shared by the very planet itself. It was a desolate, tiring existence, constantly being under the fire of those twin suns that never seemed to give the planet a rest or even lighten up a little. The world was a dry, dry scorching place and that day was no exception.

But I didn't really give a crap about that.

I was too busy (meaning distracted by) keeping an eye on a certain spiky-haired gunman and making sure nothing happened (meaning making sure he didn't do anything stupid) to him. The man had the largest bounty in the history of the planet stamped on his head and what does he do?

Sits on the porch and stare at people walking by.

Now, I'm not unfamiliar with the concept of the best hiding place being right in the open, but, seriously, he was so easily distracted by his surroundings that someone could have came up and clobbered him alongside the head while he was busy staring at a tiny bird hopping around the street.

He apparently named them 'hoppy birds', but that's irrelevant.

Today, though, he seemed particularly interested in watching people, as opposed to the little birds, which aggravated me ever more. Sure, hiding in the open can be effective, assuming you don't consciously direct attention to yourself by, oh, say, staring (very obviously, I may add) at every person who walks by.

This had been going on for a good hour or so before I got fed up. Sighing, I finally spoke up. "Okay, what the Hell are you doing?"

He flailed his arms, jumped up, spun around, and fell over.

I slapped my forehead.

Clutching his chest with one hand and wrapping his other around one of the porch's posts, shouted in what could only be described as the voice of a small girl. "Jeez! Don't sneak up on me, priest-man!"

"I didn't sneak up on anybody!" Sighing, I went over and sat next to the dimwit. He reclaimed his seat and, after a few minutes, he was watching all the people again. "Now what the Hell are you doing?"

"Watching."

I wasn't sure if I should have hit him for that response or hit myself for waiting a minute expecting him to elaborate. Exasperated, I asked, "Watching what?"

"Peoples."

This time I realized he wasn't going to explain further and asked, "Why?"

Instead of answering, her turned to me and shot that foolish, toothy grin of his at me. "You're just full of questions today, aren't you, preacher?"

Giving him the most unamused expression I could muster, I growled, "Will you just answer the damn questions?"

Instead of answering the damn questions, he pointed over his shoulder at one of the people he had been watching, who was then walking down the street. "What do you think his name is?"

There are no words in any language to describe what I looked like at that moment, so I'll simply jump to my quiet and lost response. "What?"

"What do you think his name is?"

"Don't go changing the subject, Spiky!" I growled.

"Aww, come on, Wolfwood, guess."

I sighed and caved in. "Peter."

He recoiled as if he had drank stagnant water. "Ach! No!" He shook his head, as if I had been off the mark by so much that I seemed like a drunk marksman. "Wrong! It's Robert Derchingham."

I was unamused. "And how exactly do you know this?"

"By watching," he said matter-of-factly.

I glared at him. "There's no way you could know someone's name just by watching them."

He blinked at me, as if he was surprised that I suggested such a thing. "How do you know? He looks like a Robert, doesn't he? I know more about Robert too. He's a good person who pays his taxes and works hard. He does gamble a lot though. Oh, he's also having an affair with that woman over there," he points to a completely random woman standing in the street. "It isn't going too well for either of them in their married lives, I'm afraid. Her name is Nancy Bech, by the way."

I folded my arms and glared at him. Yes, glared at him more. "Now you're just making crap up."

He raised an eyebrow at me. "Oh, yeah? Watch this." I was expecting something stupid, but not quite what he did. He stood up and, waving a hand at the random man's back, shouted "Hey Bob!" before I could tackle him to the ground and tell him to shut it.

Much to me surprise and even more to my confusion, the man turned around and waved to Vash. Granted, the man was very confused—probably more so than myself—and looked pretty uncomfortable, but…

It was the type of uncomfortable someone looked when someone they don't know addresses them by name.

Bob, er, Robert, or whoever he was, after waving back awkwardly, returned to his random activity, which now seemed to include putting as much distance between himself and Vash as quickly as possible.

Spiky turned to me and grinned. "See?"

Mouth gaping, I continued to stare at the man as he ran off. I also noticed that that woman was in the direction he ran off to, as well, and, blinking, I rubbed my face. "Well, I'll be damned…"

Vash the Stampede was certainly a man of mystery and many skills, as his reputation suggests. He is a man with mysteries that become revealed one day at a time (though, as that continues, the number of unknown mysteries just becomes more obvious) and shows new, nearly impossible skills in every instance. Yes, those stories of this man were not exaggerated in any sort of way. The tales of the Humanoid Typhoon just left one detail out concerning those mysteries and skills:

Nine times out of ten, they were as useless as they were impressive.


End file.
